by Steven Adler
Tracii was someone Slash and I knew from Bancroft Junior High School. He used to have the total surfer-boy look with the straight blond hair that all the girls liked. Now he sported jet-black hair and tattoos. We didn’t really hang with him that much and never jammed with him. Axl and Tracii had a place together, and it was there that they came up with the name for their band.
For one reason or another, however, Tracii and Rob weren’t up for the trip to Seattle. I guess it wasn’t hard to see why they felt that way. The thought of humping their asses nearly a thousand miles north for a couple of gigs that wouldn’t even cover gas money probably struck them as pretty fucking dumb.
So Izzy called Slash and Slash called me, and for us it was “Hell yeah!” from the start. It wasn’t even something I had to think about. I loved playing in a band and I loved rock ’n’ roll so much that it was a no-brainer: “Where’s the gig? Siberia? Okay, I’m there.” Simple. After that epic road trip, we were pretty much inseparable and became the founding members, the classic Appetite for Destruction lineup.
MY DRUM SETUP’THE TRUTH
The Thursday-night gig, before we headed north, was at the Troubadour. So we practiced Tuesday night and Wednesday. I still remember what it felt like when Slash and I walked in to set up for that Tuesday practice. There was zero awkwardness, everybody got along really well, and there was a distinct willingness to make it happen. To Izzy’s and Axl’s credit, there was complete respect for what we were each bringing to the table and none of that newcomers-versus-veterans bullshit. We jammed to a Stones song, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and an Elvis oldie, “Heartbreak Hotel,” and then kind of looked at one another. I definitely had a sense that something special was brewing.
I honestly don’t think it was just me who felt that way, because Thursday night, something permeated the show at the Troubadour and it went pretty well. I remember we played for only about ten people, and it didn’t matter. We were playing for the music, for the sheer excitement of performing live. There’s actually a photo from it in the Live Era record, and you can see Michelle Young standing to the side with her hand in the air.
That was also the first time in forever that I played with a single bass drum. And you know what? I loved it. Ever since that show, I decided to keep my drums set up that way. Now, maybe you’ve heard all about how Duff and Slash hid one of my bass drums on me before the show, forcing me to play with just one bass in my setup. And there’s a story out there that they knew in their hearts if they could just get me to play one gig that way, I’d be sold and never use a double bass again.
It’s a sweet little story, but at the time, the only thing Slash hid on me was his stash. The simple truth is that one of my bass drums was busted. Somebody had fucked it up by dropping it or stacking an amp on top of it. So I had to go on that night with a setup consisting of a bass, a snare, a floor tom, one ride, a crash, a high hat, and a cowbell. Necessity can be a motherfucker, but that night she did me right.
Now, we must have been deadly serious and not a little nervous about our first road trip the next day, because I don’t remember going out and partying that hard after the Troubadour show. Suddenly, it was Friday morning (late morning, natch) and the time had come to drive up to Seattle. We loaded all our shit into our friend Jo Jo’s car. Jo Jo was this raw-lookin’, rough-edged kind of guy with long stringy brown hair. His brother Raz was a buddy of ours too. Raz was confined to a wheelchair, and a greater, more enthusiastic soul you’ve never met. They were willing to do anything to help us out and were both really great guys.
Our friend Danny was coming along to give us a hand too. He was a cool kid with short blond hair that he had all spiked out with gel and hairspray. They all did their part and roadied up for us. We were all the same age, and we all busted ass to get the show on the road. There were no chiefs and no peons; we were all equals, all like brothers. We were on our way. Eight hundred forty-five miles to our first paying gig on the road. This was it, damn the torpedoes, no looking back.
We got as far as Bakersfield.
Our shit box of a car, I think it was an Oldsmobile, just died on us. We couldn’t believe it. But we decided we were going to get to the gig by any means necessary. Danny and Jo Jo agreed to stay with the car, get it fixed, keep an eye on our gear, and somehow get it all up there. I grabbed my stick bag, the guys grabbed their axes, and we started walking along the freeway with our thumbs in the air. Have Guns N’ Roses, will travel.
Five long-haired, cocky punks, each one in the best of moods, set out to fulfill their destiny. We hitched a bit, then while the other guys were taking a break sitting on the side of the road, I managed to snag a ride from an immense eighteen-wheeler. We all piled in and were able to get as far as a truck stop just outside Medford, Oregon. There, a Mexican farmer and his son stopped for us in a ratty pickup truck, and we all piled in the back. Unfortunately, we were way too heavy, and the tires started rubbing against the fender wells. We pretended not to notice that there was smoke everywhere (we’d rather have suffocated from the fumes than gotten back out and walked), but naturally, he couldn’t take us any farther. We thanked him and got out.
About an hour later, two wild hippie chicks blew by us as we waved our thumbs in the air. I yelled, “Shit!” But I could see they were checking us out as they flew by. I crossed my fingers and watched as they made a lazy U-turn, came back, and picked us up. They both had waist-length hair and were dressed in colorful commune clothes. We put our guitars in the trunk and piled in. They said when they were younger, they used to hitchhike everywhere and would get pissed when no one would pick them up. That’s why they came back for us.
They were totally sweet women with some sweet weed. I remember chatting with them: “Oh, you lovely ladies. My kind of girls.” I was in the backseat leaning forward with my arms around them. They took us to Portland. Then Duff’s friend Greg drove down from Seattle, picked us up, and took us to the Gorilla Gardens, the filthy dive bar where we were to do the show that night.
When we got there, we walked right onto the stage, and just in the nick of time. We didn’t have time to grab a beer, smoke a joint, or put on makeup. Although we were still at the stage where we’d tease our hair up to God and slap on the eye shadow, heavy eyeliner, and lipstick for our stage performances, there just wasn’t a minute to spare. Later I’ll get into how I put an end to the whole tedious makeup routine. Most fortunately, we were able to use the previous band’s equipment. We just went on, jacked in, and played our songs.
We opened with “Reckless Life,” then did “Shadow of Your Love,” “Move to the City,” “Anything Goes,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and closed with “Heartbreak Hotel,” which was Axl’s choice. Axl often warmed up his voice with an Elvis cover and was a big Elvis fan going back to his days growing up in the Midwest. “Heartbreak” got the biggest response; “thankyouverymuch,” King. And although we didn’t exactly bring down the house, we got decent applause and were all smiles after the show, feeling that for the most part, it went over pretty well.
Afterward we had drinks with Duff’s friends, and a nicer, more gracious bunch of partiers you’d be hard-pressed to find. Duff was very popular around the Seattle area; everyone knew and liked him. His buddy Greg invited us back to his place. I walked in the house and I was like, “Oh, yeah.” I was in heaven. He had at least fifty plants growing in his basement, the best pot I had ever smelled, and at the time, it was the best weed I’d ever toked. Greg, his girlfriend Jill, and I just smoked out.
Greg’s girlfriend made us a big spaghetti dinner, and then we smoked some more. The next day she gave us a ride, not to the state line, not to San Francisco, but all the way back to L.A. Thank you, Jill, that was so incredibly cool of you.
When we hit town, word got back to us through Duff’s network of friends that Jo Jo and Danny had fixed their car. The drums and the gear were safe. All in all, it was a miracle. We had hitchhiked up the whole West Coast with no gear and no money, and althoug
h we missed the other two gigs Duff had lined up, we pulled off the main booking in Seattle and not one of us ever complained.
That trip was the acid test, the mondo bondo epoxy that sealed our fate as the original Guns N’ Roses. Ever since that trip we stuck together like we were one creature. It was as if we had set up this ridiculously irrational initiation ceremony, one that no sane person could have tolerated. Because that’s what GNR had to be all about. We never did anything the sane, sensible way. We never went by the rules and never conformed to an accepted path to success. The way we came up with our songs, insisted on total artistic freedom, the way we practiced and played—no one did it like we did.
It was “Break the mold to make the mold.” We all fed upon the same primal gut drive to take that road trip. After that experience, we knew that we were the only guys on the planet who could make this band happen!
Chapter 8
Growing Pains
BUILDING THE BAND
Our behavior was to foster an “us against them” attitude, and that approach served GNR well, driving us to make rock with an immediacy and ferocity that no one had ever attained. Once back in L.A., we found ourselves totally motivated. We really bore down and practiced all the time. We started rehearsing at this guy Nikki B’s place. His house was by the L.A. zoo. It was a dumpy dwelling in an industrial area literally plopped in the middle of nowhere. There was a junkyard on one side, and on the other side was a big warehouse under construction. Danny or Jo Jo would drive us to practice every day. That was our rehearsal spot for a while. Then Nikki B joined Tracii Guns in his new band, L.A. Guns, and we had to find another place to jam.
Our minds were blown when they recruited singer Phil Lewis. Phil was a Brit who was in a band called Girl. They had two albums out in the earlier eighties, and their guitarist, Phil Collen, went on to join Def Leppard. Things were definitely getting hot for Tracii. And you know what? Good for Tracii.
THE RIFF
After we returned from the Seattle trip, our first show was again at the Troubadour. Shortly after that we played Madame Wong’s. With Nikki B’s no longer an option, we started rehearsing at a studio behind the Guitar Center on the Sunset Strip.
That’s where Slash came up with what we all thought was this awesome riff. He said he created it to limber up his fingers, get them loose before playing. He sort of made fun of it, saying that in his head it sounded like the notes you’d play for circus music, the kind you hear on one of those tinny pipe organs. If you’ve ever listened to the organ opening on George Harrison’s “It’s Johnny’s Birthday,” you know the sound I’m talking about.
I told Slash he was overlooking the enormous potential of that lick: “That’s a great fucking riff, dude. We have to figure out a way to get that into a song.” Artists have taken segments of music only meant for limbering up and transformed them into hit songs. Edgar Winter did it with a simple percussion exercise that ended up becoming his hit “Frankenstein.”
So Slash molded the riff, and today we know it as the intro for “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” What I loved was that Slash truly displayed his brilliance by not just using it as the intro but finding a way to thread that riff throughout, using it as the backbone of the entire song.
At this point, however, we could count on one hand the number of rehearsals Axl had been to. He didn’t have a PA system back then so he never went to the studio to sing. Sometimes, he would sit just outside the studio door and sing along, but usually we would just give him a tape of our rehearsals and he would go off with it somewhere. Many times we would do a show without any idea how Axl was going to sing on one of our new songs. We’d been around, and we’d never heard of another group that could operate this way. But like I said, it was becoming more and more obvious that GNR didn’t do things like other bands, and the birth of “Sweet Child” was just one example.
Later, Axl told me that when he first heard the “Sweet Child” riff, he didn’t need to be in the same room with us; he could have heard it over a phone on the other side of the globe. He’d listen to a cassette over and over again until he worked it way down to the marrow. He wrote lyrics in his little hovel upstairs and actually preferred it that way. Axl really seemed to like keeping to himself, not because he was stuck-up, or shy, or because he needed a better PA system, but because it was his way, his own thing. We managed to see enough of each other and were playing gigs two to three times a month at that point.
After we got back from Seattle, Duff, Slash, and I started hanging out all the time. Axl was a loner who wrote killer lyrics about who we were and how we lived and what we were experiencing at the time, and Izzy, well, “Izzy’s just Izzy,” I’d say, and we’d all nod. Izzy ended up popping in about half the time. Again, there was no pattern, no agenda.
THE HELL HOUSE
We had adopted a permanent hangout. We called it the Hell House, as it was this old dilapidated shack occupied by Axl’s friends West Arkeen and Del James, a biker. It was located at Santa Monica and Poinsettia, right by Gardner Street. We rented it for around $600 a month. Well, we never actually paid a dime, but somebody must have been chipping in.
Now, West Arkeen was a real character. Axl hooked up with him through some chick. It was as if everybody met somebody through a chick they were fucking, wanted to fuck, or had fucked. That’s how we ended up at the Hell House, through a fun-loving, cross-pollinated chain of people. We were going there every day, so we agreed that since we were there all the time, we might as well make maximum use of it. Hell House became the band’s official headquarters.
We hung out, partied, puked, and passed out there. It was our preferred crash pad. It was there that Axl had his friend Bill Engell design a now famous tattoo for him, a cross that featured five skulls, caricatures of each member of the band. Slash gave Bill a hard time because he couldn’t re-create Slash’s curly fro and Slash’s skull ended up having straight hair.
The regulars at the Hell House included Duff, Slash, Izzy most nights, and me. Jo Jo, Raz, Danny, Dizzy, Del, and West were there almost all the time. Axl liked writing songs with West. He liked kicking it while West played guitar. I was there all the time, literally spending whole days and nights. There were always random people crashed out on the floor. It was a never-ending revolving door of derelicts, a hilarious party scene.
Out of this drunken wasteland everyone kind of spontaneously formed a fun jam band called the Drunk Fux. Many different people were in that band, including Tommy Lee and Lemmy. It was just a jam thing really, and we played some free benefit shows around L.A. Maybe one day we can get Mötley Crüe, Mötorhead, and GNR to reunite the Drunk Fux, the ultimate superband of the eighties.
Axl, West, and Del had their own little clique that wasn’t really part of the Drunk Fux, and I couldn’t have given less of a fuck about it. I don’t mean that as a slight to Axl. I just wasn’t into pining away at not being asked into his elite crew. I got along with everyone and was always laughing, having the time of my life.
AXHOLE
I always thought Axl was a totally cool asshole. I knew that he was a fucking star, a truly great performer. But I was also aware that at times, he could be an insecure prick. As long as he wasn’t fucking with me, however, we were cool. That’s how it was. Then he pulled the first of a series of fucked-up shit that he did to me over the years.
I remember Axl was staying with Jo Jo at his apartment. I stopped by to hang out a bit. I just opened the door and Axl jumped up and lunged at me. The place wasn’t that big so he only had to take two steps.
It happened so fast, I was like, “Huh?” He hauled off and kicked me in the balls. I could tolerate a lot of bullshit from Axl because he had some really unfortunate hang-ups, but getting my nuts cracked was the last thing I expected. I doubled over from the pain, and my eyes teared up. Then, when I was finally able to breathe, I just yelled, “Fuck you!” and left. It was the weirdest goddamn thing. But ultimately I let it go. At the time I felt I had to.
My olde
r brother, Kenny, would do shit like that to me too growing up, so I didn’t take it too much to heart. I went back to Izzy’s place and told him about it. He was surprised and just said, “I don’t know, dude.” That was the law of the Axl; you never knew why. I never did anything against him. Any chick he liked I wouldn’t fuck, although some made it clear they wanted me. If Axl was interested, I figured it was his girl. I could respect that because in the end, I didn’t care and everyone knew how insanely fucked up he was around women.
I became more frustrated with Axl’s actions over the next year. Axl’s behavior became seriously unpredictable. He was getting into fights, often starting shit at the Hell House with random people who came by to party, so they just learned to give him lots of room. Some of the uglier incidents were just hushed up, because, well, it was Axl. Axl had only one rule for himself: there are no rules.
Duff loved walking into some random club just as everyone was looking for a party or something to do after-hours. He’d invite them all back to the Hell House until they were pouring out into the streets. We would just shake it up and by four a.m., there would be a hundred people milling around.
And we were pretty resourceful once the girls got there. When one of the guys would be fucking some chick, one of the other guys would go through her purse and take like five or ten bucks. We would never steal all her money, just a small amount, because we really needed it. But the Hell House could have also been called the Shit House. After a year of constant abuse . . . well, you get the picture. Plus, the cops were starting to come by all the time. By the second year, more than half the parties we had there were busted up.